My dad cares about you!

My dad sent me an email about poisonous veggie treats and wanted me to share it.

From the CDC:

"Do not eat any more of the Veggie Booty. Throw away the bag. If anyone in your family develops diarrheal illness with bloody diarrhea, fever, or symptoms lasting more than three days, he or she should consult a healthcare provider."

Samonella in your booty!

Be careful.

free time

For those of you who are broke, sick of souless interactions or just hate the man, The Really Really Free Market is this weekend. The first Freecycle FreeMeet was there on a cool, dewy October afternoon. I really enjoyed myself and even got a little owl lantern that I still have today.

I'd be out there with my scissors and comb but I will be out of town.

Here is more info:
It's gonna be a hot summer! Come cool off at the
Summer Really Really Free Market!

* Free Stuff! * Free Services! * Free Fun! *

Everyone's favorite open-air bazaar and community
celebration returns this summer with a vengeance! The
Summer Really Really Free Market is ready to roll, BUT
needs YOU to help make it the best one yet!

WHEN? SATURDAY JULY 21st NOON

WHERE? ST. MARK'S CHURCH (2ND AVE & 10th STREET)

Swap goods (You know, the stuff that is too good to
throw away but you shouldn't keep), share skills, give
presents, eat food, hang out, dance, and have fun—all
for free!

Nothing will be for sale!

If you have a skill to share, stuff to give away, a
crazy art thing to do, music to play, an idea for
entertainment or a topic to discuss; email us soon and
let us know what you are planning! Otherwise, plan on
bringing your own table or blanket and coming and
going as you please, and if you want contact us, just
e-mail: inourhearts@gmail.com

Show up to St. Mark's Church with something to share,
and let this be another step in our movement towards a
really, really free world. Bring friends and gifts,
leave your wallet at home.

Stuff to consider bringing, services you many consider
providing:

music (bands/musicians --acoustic), food
(vegan/vegetarian), clothes, books, movies (vhs/dvd),
recorded music (tapes, cds), computer software,
kitchen supplies, electronics, plants, instruments,
picture frames, office supplies, candles, knick
knacks, toys, jewelry, skillshares (hands-on stuff
like how-to change a bike tire, make sushi, make a
stencil, get social services, etc. etc.), and skills
(massage, haircuts, reiki, etc. etc.)

The more people who show up to have fun, the better it is. Don't let the dreadlocked and stinky bogart the scene!

be safe

Today is National HIV testing Day.
Here are the NY centers participating.

(via the amazing Women's Health News blog)

A million weekends in one

Last Saturday, in the midst of two family visits, I went to MoCCAfest.
I immediately looked for the PARTYKA table to see what was up with Sara and her crew, but since the map of the vendors required more attention than I could give, I just wandered around being tantalized until B showed up and said he had seen the trouble I was looking for.

Here's my haul:


I did well at the sparkplug comicbooks table and Dylan Williams was nice enough to chat for awhile, make recommendations and throw a book for reviewing my way. It looks like they are putting out a bunch of quality stuff, (including Austin English's new book Windy Corners).

I also got this cool little painting by Lucy Knisley called "SUPER TALL BIKE !":


Hope Larson was keeping a watchful eye on her, but Lucy did cut me and B a deal on the painting and was an all-around cool lady. Hope was there selling her own books and the amazing House of Sugar.

There were two floors of vendors and so much good stuff that I ended up spending all my money before I really got a chance to see everything. One thing I love about this fest is that it is not a comicon; there are no jerks in costume, no bikini-clad sexrobots and no attitude. There are however loads of hot folks all heady with overstimuli. The only thing missing is food.

I wanted to buy a painting or large prints, but nothing caught my eye fast enough. Next time... sigh.

B and his sister also got lost and broke with stuff from Squidfire and Top Shelf and Paping.

On the way to Atlas Cafe on Second Ave. for vegan soft serve (which they were out of), an unusually generous Houston St. junk seller gave me this cd for free:

The music looks bad, but I have a weakness for Nara's angry girls.

Because my mom and aunt came to town I could not attend the second day and spend even more money than I have. I am trying to look at that like it is a good thing even though I know I missed hungover cartoonist shenanigans and desperate giveaways. Years of my own desperation has given me a keen sense of smell for it...

I wish I had had more time to meet people, get some stuff signed and see other acquaintances that were lurking about. Write a letter, kids, MoCCAfest needs to be twice a year.

That night B's band had a show and we were all wrecked for my femrelations' visit the next day. Only I accompanied them to the Folk Art Museum, which I always love. It is so near to MOMA that I think people forget about it. The space is great and the exhibits are usually interesting. I highly recommend it for New Yorkers especially; I mean, how many times can you drag yourself through the Met after everyone has visited?

BAD NEWS

a most excellent blog is going the way of all poor parent company decisions and to that I say triple F minus.

RIP Table of Malcontents.

image from ToC

MOCCAfest is this weekend

This weekend is MoCCAfest. This year the panels are not super interesting (to me anyway), but all of our comics friends will be there, right?

Anyway the info is rather unhelpfully displayed here.

Maybe I will see you there.

In between the gigantor after-work naps I have been taking and not writing, I have been bopping around the internets trying to get smarter. I found many a new site, but this one made me grope for the publish button:

Austin Kleon['s awesome blog about comics, writing and love]

Yet another smart person is moving to Austin. Why haven't I done that yet?

Check me writing about Jack Pendarvis at bookslut. Be warned-- there are a million typos in this piece. I hope I can fix them before June's issue is up too long.

As you can see from the review the whole Sedarisesque grasping for poignancy through gross-out technique wears me out. maybe that's why there are all those typos...

true wisdom

Doppelganger lays it out for the world over at 50 Books with her list of hard-won wisdom:

6. Saying whatever is on your mind all the time is neither "being true to yourself" nor is it "just being honest." It's "being an asshole."

There is no excuse to be a damn fool after reading her post.

The only thing I could possibly add to this list today is this:
_The nice, secluded stall you use at work to take big, nasty dumps in is the same one everybody takes big nasty dumps in. We all know what you are doing in there, even if we can't see your shoes, and I for one do not judge you.

I know I am late

I wanted to post a link to this short interview with Lydia Millet from Bookslut. Ican tell she didn't care for Elizabeth Merrick's questions, but I wish she had tried harder to give some fuller answers. Everybody knows that when an interviewer asks a question you don't like, it's time to just talk about something you want to talk about in lieu of a topical answer.

"And, finally, if there is one thing you could change about your writing life or career, what would it be?

I'd like more people to read my books."

You have too much stuff

The next Freecycle event in NYC:

Spring Cleaning? Don't throw it away!

HARLEM YMCA * FREECYCLE™ NEW YORK CITY *
OFFICE of RECYCLING OUTREACH & EDUCATION
present...

A Spring Cleaning FreeMeet!
Saturday, June 2, 2007, 11am-4pm
Harlem YMCA-The Little Theatre
180 West 135th St. at Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. (7th Ave),
New York City

Directions: M2 Bus, 2, 3 or C to 135th St.

New Yorkers discard some 12,000 tons of waste each day that is
exported to landfills and incinerators in other states! Here's your
chance to help NYC reduce waste and keep our environment clean
by finding new homes for your old stuff, and getting some things
you can use in the process.

WHAT TO BRING: Items that are no longer useful to you, but can be reused
by others. You don't need to bring anything to take anything (though a
tote bag might help). Bring friends and family too!

WHAT NOT TO BRING: No furniture/large items, drugs/medications,
weapons/dangerous objects, adult movies/magazines or pets/pethair
covered items.

For more information, visit www.RecycleThisNYC. org/freemeet
or call 212-788-7989.

Be there!

No More to Roam, for now

Portland, OR:
gyros, stumptown, other people's crushes, the world's tiniest adult shop, Grundel!, arts and crafts architecture, plant wowsers

Road, rock, road, sleep, road, Best Western

Ellensburg, WA and beyond:
bands, wind, cold, sunscreen, "historic downtown," tension, bad food, wavers and butt watchers

Road, tension, drive-by Seattle, road, rock, road

Portland, OR:
other people's work, pizza, hybrids, more plant wowsa, baby lust, mexican, painful math, goodbyes, cool school, bed, breakfast, heat, Powell's: disappointment, then redemption in the comix (I love the nineties) and small press sections (will I like Gary Lutz? Everybody else seems to), Chinese garden not for free, gyros, tea, tea, tea and airplane.

New York City:
sigh, water plants, sleep, sigh

Back to the books!

One of the things I have been doing instead of reading books for fun is working in my garden. Thursday, instead of wrangling words I felt like showing some dirt who’s boss. While being bossy I managed to get filthy and slightly sweaty before the FedEx guy came with a box of more plants that I ordered during a recent, financially unwise spree. Then it was all over for the blank spots between bulb plants. I have another two orders coming in and then I will be able to sit back and enjoy, at least until fall.

My first clematis flower of the season bloomed! It is fuchsia!

I succeeded in waking a number of dormant plants with TLC!

“Muddying up” has now been added to my vocabulary!

I am pretty sure I saw a worm poop!

A number of flies were buzzing around my compost heap and my increasingly filthy body during the hours that I was out there, I saw a giant shiny blue one and a few medium-sized jewel green ones and even a bunch of zebra-striped ones with giant red eyes all of which I would likely consider quite beautiful if I didn’t know that they were feeding off of the corpse of my hipness.

***
Recently I have read a few good things and many mediocre things, most of which I am working on writing about for other places. I have, however, been trolling the blogs of literary import and have come up with a few statements:

1) Of course newspapers say silly, uninformed stuff about lit blogs.
2) I am confused as to why litbloggers care about the above.
3) Things are not often the way they are supposed to be.

***
The last bleeding heart:


***
This weekend, due to traveling and my own forgetfulness, I have read many articles in The Believer. As usual, despite enjoying one or two long articles in each magazine (the May 07 Rick Moody piece on W.G. Sebald’s books comes to mind, especially his bit on textual compulsion and creating reading spaces for each literary obsession), the overall product left me feeling a mixture of envy and a bit shortchanged.

Harrumph.

I really love the sense that Believer writers have the freedom to fail, to fail to reach conclusions, to fail to be constrained by objectivity, to fail to be wholly entertaining. It is a very similar feeling to the one I get when I doodle through the blog roll. I am envious of the beautiful design of each issue and the large pool of artistic talent they seem to be able to draw from. The consistent feeling of fun the magazine maintains is its biggest draw and I am one thousand percent behind fun.

But, at the and of an issue, I do feel a nagging lack of satisfaction, like my Kool Aid was switched with bug juice, but I AM NOT EVEN AT CAMP!

GO!

Tomorrow, there will be what sounds like an awesome event at Rocketship. I will be on a train, so you should go in my place.

8PM @
Rocketship
208 Smith Street
Brooklyn
718 797 1348
Take the F or G to the Bergen Street stop


lauren Weinstien will be reading (i think) "Horse Camp," which is kickass and Ariel and Tania Schrag will be doing the slideshow reading thing too. The book they are promoting is Stuck in the Middle – 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age, edited by Ariel Schrag. According to my sources, there will be food and drink too.

I haved missed all the Weinstein this week and I am so, so sad for myself.

Dark as night; the internet lives

Outside the sky is dark, yet I still have over an hour of work to go. I believe that this is only a result of having such a wonderful day yesterday.

After weeding the garden as thoroughly as my mild OCD required, I put on some ill-fitting shorts and began walking over to the big buildings as my love for lunch with B requires. As usual he was delayed so I took a detour to Bryant Square Park and who should I see but Amy Ambulette blinking in the sunshine with her boss. I tried to pretend that I was overexposed in the leg-al region and was perhaps on some secret businessy business, but this lasted mere nanoseconds before I possibly endangered Amy's financial welfare with various spoken emoticons and curses. Sorry, lady! clown hat smiley face!

After she went back to slave away in one of the area's towers of power, I went in search of a place to sit down and instead found the Bryant Park Reading Room, an outdoor area supplied with books for people too cool to bring their own props for across the bench romancing. I was apparently so charming that I nabbed a 50-something Slovenian man's attentions, but not before I looked at a giant book of Bresson photos, a SF journal from the 90s and marveled at how many NYBR titles they had. Though many of the volumes were suspiciously dirty, it was still a treat to be able to browse around while waiting to meet B. If I had known I was going to be there for upwards of three hours, I would have worn pants and brought my own book.

Still, on a day that promised to be not more than nice, I had a great time in a park that rivaled many of my times in the world's best park, Rittenhouse Square. I managed to not be overwhelmed by my terminal nostalgia and plan on spending many more sunny afternoons in the park.

After the rain stops, of course.

Back now, still no books

In response to The Big D's post about tunes in one's head, here is my list:

Laid by James
Sexy MF by Prince
"starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam" by Prince
"when you rock n roll with me, there's no on else I'd rather be, nobody down here can do it for me, I'm in tears" by David Bowie [the album Diamond Dogs is always coursing through my brain from the opening howl. I guess I need a little love in a doorway.]
Dreamer's Ball by Queen
This House that I Call Home by X
"wiggle it til it works" by the Knitters
"if it feels this good gettin used, well then keep on usin me, till you use me up" by a guy I can never remember

I'd take the songs in my head over an iPod anyday...

And you?

ETA:
Roadrunner by The Modern Lovers
I'm Straight by The Modern Lovers
Lady Stardust by David Bowie
and also format it up...

ABANDONED!!!

Sometimes it is just better to stop. I am in the middle of Found in the Street by Patricia Highsmith and for the first time with one of her books, I just don’t want to finish it. Something about the sentences feel labored and worked over and Highsmith’s usual slow burn is just a limp this time.

In a bookstall near NYU I found this kicky little British paperback. I snapped it up and promptly put it away behind a chair on top of a stack of my boy’s Believers, far away from all the other books and destined to be forgotten until a time of need. Well, that TON was last week after a string of disappointing reads. I wanted something creepy but distant seeming, like Poe, but smart like Shirley or Shelley Jackson. I also happened to have that chair in my sight line. Satisfaction was guaranteed, except, well, not exactly.

The main character, Jack, is a man fascinated by the women in his life and he idolizes them ridiculously. Every behavior this guy shows seems to be a rationalization; a reaction to an agreement about “freedom” he made with his wife and child’s mother, Natalia. Say it with me kids, Natahhhhleeeaaaaaaaaa. Natty, by the way, is supposed to be beguiling with her art and possible bisexuality and all, but she just comes off as a somewhat heartless scenester. These flaws don’t deepen the character as they do in, for example Strangers on a Train, they seem like tics on Highsmith’s part or like she was trying to explore something that didn’t work out and just published the B-grade remains.

In particular, this book’s physical character descriptions of women are so weird it is distracting. “She was at least forty-five, and some needed makeup, but underneath, as they say, she was not the made-up type.” Who is they? What do they say? So-and-so doesn’t wear make-up, so-and-so wears this kind of make-up, so-and-so is a natural beauty who didn’t need make-up. Whaaaaaa? Part of this may be that though this book was published in the 80s, it has a distinctly sixties feel, even with a mention of AIDS and an out out out character. She was presumably living overseas when she wrote this, having left America in disgust in 1963, and the New York in this book seems frozen during that time of bohemians in the Village and dirty little secrets just peeking out from under the buttoned-up denim of America.

Maybe sometime I will have the patience to finish this book, disappointing as it is, and just enjoy the tiny bits of Highsmith charm that pop up here and there, but for now: ABANDONED!!!

My work sweater smells like bacon

Extreme procrastination has led me to read the entire internet over the last few days and now I realize it is time to write some letters, finish the kinda blah Patricia Highsmith book I am reading or just plain do some work. This kind of miserable drizzle always makes me want to work, or rather, to have worked and take time to bask in the product.

Last night I made some BEC sandwiches (think about it... and there!) and the apartment hasn't recovered. Neither has my stomach and I dreamt all night of San Francisco, Baltimore, gentrification, drunken mistakes of the losing-precious-possessions kind and thrift stores. And pirate kings. This could have been a result of thehttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif confluence of the aforementioned sandwiches and the pound of grapes I decided to consume with them before falling asleep in front of Dead Man.

But look away from my shame and onto:

Interviews are back at millwhistle!
Gwyneth Jones doesn't say much under the guise of rapping about the SF in our real lives and reminds me of not liking her book which I really wanted to like!
Amy Ambulette has sex in one hour sometimes! (Do you like the way I sell it Amy? Do ya?)
The prog lady still hasn't posted anything new!

Also, for all you writerly, interviewerly people out there:
Please take a long look at Topic wearing its web suit. If this seems like something you would like to be a part of, email me at carrie.jones AT topicmag.com and we will talk. (The site requires a free sign up). If you know some younguns that want to exercise their chops, I am looking for a few good interns as well.

Nice weather signals not only time to get that helmet on and get on a bike, it is also time to sign up for a CSA.

Object Lesson

Saturday night a helmet saved my life. If B had not been wearing a helmet when he had a bike accident only a few blocks from our apartment, I would have likely expired from grief.

In the ambulance, my honey did not know how old he is. He did not know what landed him strapped to a gurney. He did not remember calling me to tell me he "fell off" his bike. Then shock set in and I couldn't warm him up.

The emergency room smelled like rotten fish and barf. Not the best way to spend a Saturday night.


B left the hospital with busted face and hands, and some (possibly) fractured ribs. Two days later he is back to his sharp self but in a lot of pain.

ALWAYS wear your helmet folks. No excuses.